loyalty, old chap. But you haven’t failed me yet.”
“Thank you, sir.” Chives stared hard at his own busy hands. “I …
endeavor … to give satisfaction.”
Time swooped past.
“Attention!” cried from the screen. “You are off course! You are in
absolutely barred territory!”
“Say on,” Flandry jeered. He half hoped to provoke a real response. The
voice only denounced his behavior.
A thump resounded and shivered. The tone of wind and engines ceased.
They were down.
Flandry vaulted from his chair, snatched a combat helmet, buckled it on
as he ran. Beneath it he already wore a mindscreen, as did everybody
aboard. Otherwise he was’ attired in a gray coverall and stout leather
boots. On his back and across his chest were the drive cones and
controls of a grav unit. His pouchbelt held field rations, medical
supplies, canteen of water, ammunition, blaster, slugthrower, and
Merseian war knife.
At the head of his dozen Dennitzan marines, he bounded from the main
personnel lock, along the extruded gangway, onto the soil of Chereion.
There he crouched in what shelter the hull afforded and glared around,
fingers on weapons.
After a minute or two he stepped forth. Awe welled in him.
A breeze whispered, blade-sharp with cold and dryness. It bore an iron
tang off uncounted leagues of sand and dust. In cloudless violet, the
sun stood at afternoon, bigger to see than Sol over Terra, duller and
redder than the sun over Diomedes; squinting, he could look straight
into it for seconds without being blinded, and through his lashes find
monstrous dark spots and vortices. It would not set for many an hour,
the old planet turned so wearily.
Shadows were long and purple across the dunes which rolled cinnabar and
ocher to the near horizon. Here and there stood the gnawed stump of a
pinnacle, livid with mineral hues, or a ravine clove a bluff which might
once have been a mountain. The farther desert seemed utterly dead.
Around the city, wide apart, grew low bushes whose leaves glittered in
rainbows as if crystalline. The city itself rose from foundations that
must go far down, must have been buried until the landscape eroded from
around them and surely have needed renewal as the ages swept past.
The city–it was not a giant chaos such as besat Terra or Merseia;
nothing on Chereion was. An ellipse defined it, some ten kilometers at
the widest, proportioned in a right-ness Flandry had recognized from
afar though not knowing how he did. The buildings of the perimeter were
single-storied, slenderly colonnaded; behind them, others lifted ever
higher, until they climaxed in a leap of slim towers. Few windows
interrupted the harmonies of colors and iridescence, the interplay of
geometries that called forth visions of many-vaulted infinity. The heart
rode those lines and curves upward until the whole sight became a silent
music.
Silent … only the breeze moved or murmured.
A time passed beyond time.
“Milostiv Bog,” Lieutenant Vymezal breathed, “is it Heaven we see?”
“Then is Heaven empty?” said another man as low.
Flandry shook himself, wrenched his attention away, sought for his
purposefulness in the ponderous homely shapes of their armor, the guns
and grenades they bore. “Let’s find out.” His words were harsh and loud
in his ears. “This is as large a community as any, and typical insofar
as I could judge.” Not that they are alike. Each is a separate song. “If
it’s abandoned, we can assume they all are.”
“Why would the Merseians guard … relics?” Vymezal asked.
“Maybe they don’t.” Flandry addressed his minicom. “Chives, jump aloft
at the first trace of anything untoward. Fight at discretion. I think we
can maintain radio contact from inside the town. If not, I may ask you
to hover. Are you still getting a transmission?”
“No, sir.” That voice came duly small. “It ceased when we landed.”
“Cut me in if you do … Gentlemen, follow me in combat formation.
Should I come to grief, remember your duty is to return to the fleet if
possible, or to cover our boat’s retreat if necessary. Forward.”
Flandry started off in flat sub-gee bounds. His body felt miraculously
light, as light as the shapes which soared before him, and the air